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Jones out to 'paint our own picture' in England-Wales rivalry
Eddie Jones has cast a typically disparaging view on Wales’ historical dominance over England as he begins the mental battle ahead of next weekend’s Six Nations clash.
Wales have won 60 per cent of their home games against England since 1992, including a Six Nations-sealing 30-3 mauling in Cardiff in 2013 that denied the Grand Slam hopes of Stuart Lancaster’s side.
England under Jones are becoming an altogether different prospect, however, and a late show against France began their Six Nations defence with a 19-16 win at Twickenham, securing an unbeaten record of 15 games in a row.
The English have won the last two matches between the sides, and avenged their 2013 thrashing by winning on their last trip to Cardiff, prompting Jones to offer a stern, if somewhat perplexing, counter to any thoughts of Welsh dominance.
“I’ve spoken to a number of people. There’s a certain story people like to paint when you’re playing Wales,” he said.
“If you get involved in painting that picture, you get involved in the painting.
“We don’t want to be involved in the painting. We want to paint our own picture. And the picture we paint isn’t going to be the picture that was painted in the past.”
Jones described Saturday’s display against the French as “awful”, but rowed back on that assessment after reviewing a physically demanding encounter.
“Having watched the video again, we actually didn’t play that badly,” he added.
“If you take three or four easy dropped passes and some, at times, fragile defence the majority of our game was pretty sound.
“The scrum improved a lot. We didn’t attack like England until the last 20 minutes of the game and our stats in that period were absolutely outstanding in terms of work rate, execution and effort.
“It was one of those games that looked worse when you saw it live, but having watched it again we weren’t far away from the money and we’re certainly on the way to playing a very good game against Wales.”
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